I do feel for the poor chaps who must do it, but personally, I do this _every_ chance I get. Longest was about 2 weeks. I actually prefer capsules to conventional hotels: nice long saunas, a chance to meet and hang out with interesting people (rather than holing up in a room), it forces you to stay out (again, so you don't stay holed in), and you can't beat the price: $25-$35 a night, right in the middle of all the action.
You could also do pretty much the same at Internet Cafes. I've found the accommodation (couch+cubicle+snacks+internet+manga+games) to be far better than even most first-class flight cabins. You still need your everyday clothes on, so I'd stay there max 2 days.
Tip: best way to visit Japan: travel very light. Buy shaving supplies, soap, t-shirts, etc. at the local combini or 99 yen store. Instead of spend money at a single hotel, spend it traveling to different parts of the country: danjiri festival here, live music there, temple over there, robots over there, party over here. All without luggage to slow you down.
For a unique spin on beginning electronics. It's a very different medium from traditional science kits, but your kids can make usable, wearable electronics while learning about circuits. With the kits, you can sew a simple circuit to a shirt/hat/jacket using conductive thread and a tiny LED (perhaps for the 9-year old). You could also make a small felt accessory to control your iPod. There are a variety of kits, from really easy, to a bit involved.
The following assumes this is a hardware patent you have in mind.
The days of patenting for the lone inventor are over, seriously. And what if you do patent it? You'll end up spend the bulk of your time, brain power, and meager resources defending it. Unless you have the resources to hire a cadre of lawyers, you won't even be able to defend infringements. And we've not even discussed international patents... which still won't stop Chinese knockoffs (at least not for the foreseeable future).
There is a lot of money being made in the (e.g.) open-hardware arena: you make a gadget (brilliant idea or not), sell a couple hundred or thousand, make some money and move on to the next thing (see Arduino, Chumby, SeeedStudio, Adafruit, Sparkfun). These guys publish the specs of pretty much everything they make, with enough detail that anybody else could copy it. Yet they are rather successful for small (closely held) businesses.
So my advice is: Step 1: make Step 2: publish (gets you publicity for your gadget BTW) Step 3: open up a store front and sell Step 4: ??? (there is no step 4) Step 5: Profit!!!
It's easy to get anything manufactured in small quantities these days. And by the time somebody bothers to clone your idea (which kind proves that you must have made money, in a backhanded compliment kind of way), the hope is you've made some cash, and can spend your time innovating on the next great thing.
Let me preface this tirade with a disclaimer: Yes, I realize Microsoft is a huge company, with enough resources and market share to constitute a monopoly, and is therefore deserving of governments' watchful eyes. I also realize that IE may not be the highest quality browser out there; and that Microsoft has been known to 'embrace and extinguish'. I'm also glad that Microsoft didn't get to design (for instance) the IMAP RFC. Please note I'm not making any _legal_ arguments, just "history-of-OS" type arguments.
HOWEVER, this knee-jerk reaction to the browser-wars is really fundamentally flawed. My argument is what we, the user, perceive as an operating system changes and grows over time. I think it's time we realize that a music jukebox, dvd player, web browser, and text editor have become integral parts of an OS (per my definition). I think it is in the same manner as a command shell, file browser (cd & ls), calendar, chat client, windowing system, network stack, etc. have become what we'd consider part of an OS.
Some companies and organizations are clamoring for inclusion of their pet projects by default... I say "rubbish. You might as well ask the user to choose different versions of the TCP stack, paint program, image libraries, and mouse drivers too." I can't make any analogies to car makers, nor do I care to. We can argue about "stifling innovation and choice" until we're blue in the face, but I still insist that a web browser is integral to the operating system. Go and get alternatives if you like, just as you're free to get another media player, paint program or ftp client.
I don't see noise directed against Apple or Linux or BSD, likely because they are {not monopolies | high enough in market share | something else that I can't grok}. This would suggest that the bundling of Safari on Mac, or Mozilla on Linux is not fundamentally wrong, and is also not wrong on Windows. I'm sure there are good arguments for the EU poking its nose, but since they're so caring, they should also ask nicely that MS provide users with choice of desktop clock widgets so that the poor makers of clock software aren't left out.
Perhaps this is unfair to the hapless (as far as tech goes) politicians, but they seem little more than shills for lobbyists, and don't seem to really understand the dangerous precedent they might be setting. That, I find really irritating.
Wha....? Are you seriously suggesting that applications/utilities need to be patched to deal with faulty (yes, faulty) filesystem semantics? For _every_ single filesystem they might encounter? The whole point behind a filesystem layer is to present a unified view of files to the user layer regardless of physical media or driver quirks.
The point is really that ext4 is/was broken, and IMO, any filesystem requiring patches to applications in order not to lose data is no filesystem at all. It's unbelievable (despite the technical benefits of ext4) that this would even be up for consideration.
that's one way to deal with dynamic input... but as the parent was saying, you should keep track of len as you memmov, memcpy. I don't think anyone was suggesting static char ptr[N] as the solution for dynamic memory requirements. OTOH If you could guarantee that you'd never attempt to buffer more than N bytes (regardless of how large/varied/dynamic) the input is, then this also works.
The point is: if you're going to use a glorified assembler, you'd better keep track of where you're poking and peeking.
A popup. How lame, lazy, and dangerous: (I realize it's an optional setting)
- First, it's NOT undo... this is a delay tactic. A real undo would have the system hold the mail in your "outbox" for a user customizable time, from where you can snatch it, but only when you need to.
- Second, you now have to wait, EVERY time you send an email. Because "email regret" happens only now and then, it's likely to get turned off. Back to square one.
- Third, if there ever was a "Send now" button, you'll get so customized to pressing it, that you're again back to square one.
I appreciate the effort, but this gets an F. Please, head back to the labs, make something really sensible (i.e. not lame), and try again.
I consider myself well versed at the techie stuff (EE & CS major, unix user since '94, non-public Linux kernel hacker for ppc). Personally, I use LFS (yes, I compile/bootstrap everything and put it in its own place, _myself_), but I agree that apt-get is a pain in the ass. I appreciate all the effort that's gone into package management, but I can't say that it is trivial to install/upgrade a package using this command.
Problems include: - hunting down all the (often non-obvious) package names - dependencies - integrity checks - conflicts with other (new, old, default, broken) packages
Automated system installation is a tough nut to crack, considering the millions of packages out there, and apt-get has come a long way towards solving it... but it's still not where it should be in terms of ease. If we can accept that, then we can continue to improve the situation, not snigger at "clueless newbies."
What next? Force microsoft to unbundle the file explorer? Or notepad? Or the filesystem? Or the clock widget? Or the process scheduler? Or the tcp/ip stack? Or the sound driver? Or wmv player? In the evolution of "operating systems" over the past 30 years we have seen an increasing number of programs included in what can be considered to be part of the OS. Is "ls" part of the OS? What about ping, vi and ftp? ssh is more recent than sendmail, so some of you might think to draw the line there. Is lynx part of the OS? What about X11?
The graphical web browser is seen as such a contentious point now, but 10 years hence it will be considered "core" and integral, just as "ls" or "dir" or sockets or sound are today. To ignore the patterns of history is short sighted at best. Monopoly or not, I want a complete operating system, and it's unhelful to force me to choose from competing browsers, file managers, music players, editors, filesystems, clocks, sound drivers, system preference panels, or tcp/ip implementations. I think this is a misguided and distracting effort from the EU, and the future of computing will thank thank them for butting out.
OS enthusiast, I enjoy unix vms dos scheme c assembler lynx ie vi emacs gui cli notepad wmaker kde xfce windows metal rap. Agnostic enough to see that the brouhaha over web browser choice is just muscle flexing, and truly unhelpful in the long run.
The thing is, in rich countries like the US (especially the US), bribes are essentially standard, except they're called tips, golfing trips, expensive dinners, payola, campaign contributions, plane tickets to Hawaii. It's hard to get anything done in some countries (US included) without at least small "incentives". What generally makes news is when the bribes are discovered by the western press, resulting in scandals and "tighter legislation". That doesn't change the fact that almost every business that works there is going to get dragged into that "incentive" system in one way or another if they wish to operate. Try building _any_ structure on the East coast of the US.
The really big surprise isn't the "incentives". It's that the American government intervened to *stop* the "incentives". Now, that could just mean that they didn't get their cut, but...
Would someone please enlighten me? Is there something legally or morally wrong with two independent companies agreeing to what seems to amount to a partnership? The retailer obviously benefits from the agreement, otherwise they wouldn't have signed up; so does Intel. The argument is that Intel paid kickbacks of sorts, but what if these had simply been in the form of discounted CPUs?
Back in the day, there were stores that would sell only Apple equipment and related peripherals. I don't know if they signed any exclusive deals, but I don't recall any noise about that. Yes Intel is huge, making it vunerable to charges of monopolistic tendencies, but what is it about this case that makes it fundamentally different from any sort of exclusive agreements?
Consider: I might want to sell only cheese from a certain company, and discounts (kickbacks if you like) might make that choice even sweeter. What's wrong with that? Why do I have to sell anybody else's cheese? And why do the cheese manufacturer and I have to be punished?
What do we eat? it takes 60 days or so for corn, 100 for potatoes... and just where are we planning to plant these? In the post-apocalyptic soil eh? Good One (tm). Of course, they are doing something, I'm not, but there is such a thing as wasted effort.
You know the funny thing about the rm -f thing? These days, it does more harm when I'm logged in as myself than when logged in as root:
When I sudo into root, I am typically in some sub-directory (ie./usr/local,/etc, or/var). A badly written rm -f removes parts of my system sure, but my home folder is usually unnaffected. An hour tops to restore stuff.
However, if I were to make the same mistake any in my home tree (which is where I normally am when not sudo or root), I've lost a crapload of hours of personal work.
So for personal machines (and a lot of us are running our own personal unixen these days), I'd argue that one is more likely to actually do some real damage (albeit to your stuff) as a regular user than as root (or sudo)
Let's say he worked full time at a real job (tm), and spent his evening hours selling and taxing. If this was the case, he's earned money while most of us wasted that time watching TV, posting to slashdot (e.g. me:-), or some doing some such activity. I'd love to be making 24 grand USD in my spare time. On top of that, this income isn't taxed in the real world (or is it?)
The PC AT power supply does sound like the most efficient way to do it. Even if you've got a couple of devices that don't run off 12V or 5V, you can always slap a diode here and there to drop the voltage to your desired level; even if you're off by 0.3V, you'll be OK.
The only trouble would be any devices that need higher than 12V, for that, you could try connecting two AT supplies (GND - 12V-GND - 12V), so the max difference would be 24V. Do be careful: if the grounds cannot be "decoupled", you'll have a nice short on your hands.
On a related topic, I recently started chopping off my wall warts and replacing them with two USB plugs and some electronics, so when I travel with my gadgets I only need one hydra cable which I plug into my laptop. Provided you stay within the USB limits on current draw, you'll be fine.
I heartily agree... "with improved technology comes possibilities for improved learning".
Books are a relatively recent phenomenon in human history; the fact that several generations of children have grown up with books should not make you forget that most children did without books 300 years ago. I wonder if anyone said something along the lines of: "all these newfangled book things..., whatever happened to learning the important things in life, like watching your parents till the earth?"
I do also agree with the grandparent poster's implications about "too much technology", but the problem is not with technology itself, but with its shoddy use, and the unfortunate fact that such "toys" make it much easier for some parents to abscond their duties to teach their children.
At any rate, nothing stops a parent and child from playfully drawing different calculator shapes together, exploring computationally enhanced educational games collaboratively, or doing some good old fashioned (relatively speaking) book reading.
I'm surprised that nobody really seems to understand the context from the Hatian point of view:
I think this form of censorship is along the same lines as a society censoring a public figure for making (even remotely) disparaging remarks about _any_ group. I'm sure we can recall an instance when some Mayor/Newscaster/Governor/Councilwoman/Banker/CEO made some (apparently) anti- (mexican/black/jewish/chinese/mexican/...) remarks and was taken to task to apologise.
Now, one can argue about whether GTA is a "public figure" or not and whether this is covered under "Free Speech". But inasmuch as the "opinions" of the characters in the game reflect the thoughts of the game developers - which are now broadcast to all who are within earshot - one could consider them public.
I think it's well within reason for individuals/groups/companies to seek censure against (perceived) defamatory remarks.
Do we all remember the brouhaha about a certain singer's: "Kick me, Kike me" lyrics?
I hope that, at the very least, this gives you pause to think about the feelings of individuals/groups who don't appreciate such "unpleasant" references to themselves.
This post and the others below it seem to equate "best choice" with "better feature set" (yes, those on either side of this debate).
Sometimes, as in the case of iTunes, the "best choice" is for people who want to play their music and not hassle with it. How many people actually want to script anything? Just drag what you want, (album, song, artists) into the playlist window and boom! It's done. That's usually the advantage of GUIs (which are usually harder to script) over CLI (which are usually easier to script): you can figure out how to do things more easily with a GUI. (it's not as easy to figure out how to manipulate a CLI app without reading the man pages or the "usage screen").
Yeah, some people could do with more features, so in that case, it isn't the "best choice" for them. But on the whole, it is for most people. There is hardly ever a single solution to satisfy everybody's needs, but I can say this for a fact, for most people I've talked with (who use iTunes), it is their "best choice".
Now, I'm not jusifying these criminals who defraud people. Personally, as a Nigerian, I am embarrassed to get these letters as well, and once in a while I send a scathing reply (which I bet is promptly deleted)
Don't forget that "no truly honest person falls for these scams". The greedy fools who wanted to defraud the Nigerian government got defrauded themselves, and they have the gall to complain:-D
But one thought constantly crosses my mind when I hear people complaining about these crooks. I am ever surprised that no one talks about colonization, slavery, land grabs, and all the other "scams" the nation of Britain pulled on Nigerians for centuries. And don't forget that those scams were sanctioned by the British Government itself:-)
No, I'm not bitter... part of that was our fault. But when enteprising young men from Nigeria (much like British "entrepreneurs" in the late 1800s and early 1900s) decide to fleece Britain or America, fooling the locals from those countries, I must admit it makes me chuckle just a little bit:-)
Yes some American and British victims are "innocent", and I realize a few people have actually died while pursuing these quests for illegal money, so I'm not trying to belittle the situation; governments should continue the crackdown on these perpertrators, and their foolish victims. Yes the victims; what ever happened to aiding and abbetting a crime? That should make them delete those emails quick!
I hope I have been able to add another dimension to your thoughts when you read about 419 scams.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, dammit! One of very few posts on slashdot worth reading :-)
You already bought the shoes. Show me something else stupid.
I do feel for the poor chaps who must do it, but personally, I do this _every_ chance I get. Longest was about 2 weeks. I actually prefer capsules to conventional hotels: nice long saunas, a chance to meet and hang out with interesting people (rather than holing up in a room), it forces you to stay out (again, so you don't stay holed in), and you can't beat the price: $25-$35 a night, right in the middle of all the action.
You could also do pretty much the same at Internet Cafes. I've found the accommodation (couch+cubicle+snacks+internet+manga+games) to be far better than even most first-class flight cabins. You still need your everyday clothes on, so I'd stay there max 2 days.
Tip: best way to visit Japan: travel very light. Buy shaving supplies, soap, t-shirts, etc. at the local combini or 99 yen store. Instead of spend money at a single hotel, spend it traveling to different parts of the country: danjiri festival here, live music there, temple over there, robots over there, party over here. All without luggage to slow you down.
For a unique spin on beginning electronics. It's a very different medium from traditional science kits, but your kids can make usable, wearable electronics while learning about circuits. With the kits, you can sew a simple circuit to a shirt/hat/jacket using conductive thread and a tiny LED (perhaps for the 9-year old). You could also make a small felt accessory to control your iPod. There are a variety of kits, from really easy, to a bit involved.
Tell them I sent you :-)
The following assumes this is a hardware patent you have in mind.
The days of patenting for the lone inventor are over, seriously. And what if you do patent it? You'll end up spend the bulk of your time, brain power, and meager resources defending it. Unless you have the resources to hire a cadre of lawyers, you won't even be able to defend infringements. And we've not even discussed international patents... which still won't stop Chinese knockoffs (at least not for the foreseeable future).
For insights into why the patent process is seldom useful for individuals:
http://bit.ly/12x7EJ
http://bit.ly/3glVfj
There is a lot of money being made in the (e.g.) open-hardware arena: you make a gadget (brilliant idea or not), sell a couple hundred or thousand, make some money and move on to the next thing (see Arduino, Chumby, SeeedStudio, Adafruit, Sparkfun). These guys publish the specs of pretty much everything they make, with enough detail that anybody else could copy it. Yet they are rather successful for small (closely held) businesses.
So my advice is:
Step 1: make
Step 2: publish (gets you publicity for your gadget BTW)
Step 3: open up a store front and sell
Step 4: ??? (there is no step 4)
Step 5: Profit!!!
It's easy to get anything manufactured in small quantities these days. And by the time somebody bothers to clone your idea (which kind proves that you must have made money, in a backhanded compliment kind of way), the hope is you've made some cash, and can spend your time innovating on the next great thing.
This is the secret to happiness my friend.
Let me preface this tirade with a disclaimer: Yes, I realize Microsoft is a huge company, with enough resources and market share to constitute a monopoly, and is therefore deserving of governments' watchful eyes. I also realize that IE may not be the highest quality browser out there; and that Microsoft has been known to 'embrace and extinguish'. I'm also glad that Microsoft didn't get to design (for instance) the IMAP RFC. Please note I'm not making any _legal_ arguments, just "history-of-OS" type arguments.
HOWEVER, this knee-jerk reaction to the browser-wars is really fundamentally flawed. My argument is what we, the user, perceive as an operating system changes and grows over time. I think it's time we realize that a music jukebox, dvd player, web browser, and text editor have become integral parts of an OS (per my definition). I think it is in the same manner as a command shell, file browser (cd & ls), calendar, chat client, windowing system, network stack, etc. have become what we'd consider part of an OS.
Some companies and organizations are clamoring for inclusion of their pet projects by default... I say "rubbish. You might as well ask the user to choose different versions of the TCP stack, paint program, image libraries, and mouse drivers too." I can't make any analogies to car makers, nor do I care to. We can argue about "stifling innovation and choice" until we're blue in the face, but I still insist that a web browser is integral to the operating system. Go and get alternatives if you like, just as you're free to get another media player, paint program or ftp client.
I don't see noise directed against Apple or Linux or BSD, likely because they are {not monopolies | high enough in market share | something else that I can't grok}. This would suggest that the bundling of Safari on Mac, or Mozilla on Linux is not fundamentally wrong, and is also not wrong on Windows. I'm sure there are good arguments for the EU poking its nose, but since they're so caring, they should also ask nicely that MS provide users with choice of desktop clock widgets so that the poor makers of clock software aren't left out.
Perhaps this is unfair to the hapless (as far as tech goes) politicians, but they seem little more than shills for lobbyists, and don't seem to really understand the dangerous precedent they might be setting. That, I find really irritating.
Wha....? Are you seriously suggesting that applications/utilities need to be patched to deal with faulty (yes, faulty) filesystem semantics? For _every_ single filesystem they might encounter? The whole point behind a filesystem layer is to present a unified view of files to the user layer regardless of physical media or driver quirks.
The point is really that ext4 is/was broken, and IMO, any filesystem requiring patches to applications in order not to lose data is no filesystem at all. It's unbelievable (despite the technical benefits of ext4) that this would even be up for consideration.
int len = N; ...
void *ptr = malloc( len );
len *= 2;
ptr = realloc (ptr, len);
that's one way to deal with dynamic input... but as the parent was saying, you should keep track of len as you memmov, memcpy. I don't think anyone was suggesting static char ptr[N] as the solution for dynamic memory requirements. OTOH If you could guarantee that you'd never attempt to buffer more than N bytes (regardless of how large/varied/dynamic) the input is, then this also works.
The point is: if you're going to use a glorified assembler, you'd better keep track of where you're poking and peeking.
A popup. How lame, lazy, and dangerous: (I realize it's an optional setting)
- First, it's NOT undo... this is a delay tactic. A real undo would have the system hold the mail in your "outbox" for a user customizable time, from where you can snatch it, but only when you need to.
- Second, you now have to wait, EVERY time you send an email. Because "email regret" happens only now and then, it's likely to get turned off. Back to square one.
- Third, if there ever was a "Send now" button, you'll get so customized to pressing it, that you're again back to square one.
I appreciate the effort, but this gets an F. Please, head back to the labs, make something really sensible (i.e. not lame), and try again.
I consider myself well versed at the techie stuff (EE & CS major, unix user since '94, non-public Linux kernel hacker for ppc). Personally, I use LFS (yes, I compile/bootstrap everything and put it in its own place, _myself_), but I agree that apt-get is a pain in the ass. I appreciate all the effort that's gone into package management, but I can't say that it is trivial to install/upgrade a package using this command.
Problems include:
- hunting down all the (often non-obvious) package names
- dependencies
- integrity checks
- conflicts with other (new, old, default, broken) packages
Automated system installation is a tough nut to crack, considering the millions of packages out there, and apt-get has come a long way towards solving it... but it's still not where it should be in terms of ease. If we can accept that, then we can continue to improve the situation, not snigger at "clueless newbies."
What next? Force microsoft to unbundle the file explorer? Or notepad? Or the filesystem? Or the clock widget? Or the process scheduler? Or the tcp/ip stack? Or the sound driver? Or wmv player? In the evolution of "operating systems" over the past 30 years we have seen an increasing number of programs included in what can be considered to be part of the OS. Is "ls" part of the OS? What about ping, vi and ftp? ssh is more recent than sendmail, so some of you might think to draw the line there. Is lynx part of the OS? What about X11?
The graphical web browser is seen as such a contentious point now, but 10 years hence it will be considered "core" and integral, just as "ls" or "dir" or sockets or sound are today. To ignore the patterns of history is short sighted at best. Monopoly or not, I want a complete operating system, and it's unhelful to force me to choose from competing browsers, file managers, music players, editors, filesystems, clocks, sound drivers, system preference panels, or tcp/ip implementations.
I think this is a misguided and distracting effort from the EU, and the future of computing will thank thank them for butting out.
OS enthusiast, I enjoy unix vms dos scheme c assembler lynx ie vi emacs gui cli notepad wmaker kde xfce windows metal rap. Agnostic enough to see that the brouhaha over web browser choice is just muscle flexing, and truly unhelpful in the long run.
You do realize that the US is the #1 source of scams and spams
http://www.idm.net.au/story.asp?id=8959
US #1 28%
Korea #1 5%
China #3 5%... and so on.
I guess those free laptops to students in states like Vermont turned out to be useful afterall.
The thing is, in rich countries like the US (especially the US), bribes are essentially standard, except they're called tips, golfing trips, expensive dinners, payola, campaign contributions, plane tickets to Hawaii. It's hard to get anything done in some countries (US included) without at least small "incentives". What generally makes news is when the bribes are discovered by the western press, resulting in scandals and "tighter legislation". That doesn't change the fact that almost every business that works there is going to get dragged into that "incentive" system in one way or another if they wish to operate. Try building _any_ structure on the East coast of the US.
The really big surprise isn't the "incentives". It's that the American government intervened to *stop* the "incentives". Now, that could just mean that they didn't get their cut, but...
there... just adding some perspective...
> Having lived in a poor country myself for a number of years, I suspect that some member of the ruling oligarchy
Ah, but Nigeria isn't a poor country (per-capita not withstanding):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
read the bbc notes about Nigeria's informal economy which is estimated to be at least twice these official numbers:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1689165.stm
http://rru.worldbank.org/Discussions/Topics/Topic18.aspx
"Nigeria, is set to lead mobile phone market in the continent by December 2007, surpassing South Africa".
http://emergingworld.blogspot.com/2006/11/nigeria-another-giant-in-mobile-market.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_Nigeria
How many poor economies of oligarchs can support 40 million cellular phone subscribers? (from a total of 140 million)?
Just saying, the view that Nigeria is poor is sorely outdated and outmoded. I'm actually surprised they ordered "only" 17,000 units.
Would someone please enlighten me? Is there something legally or morally wrong with two independent companies agreeing to what seems to amount to a partnership? The retailer obviously benefits from the agreement, otherwise they wouldn't have signed up; so does Intel. The argument is that Intel paid kickbacks of sorts, but what if these had simply been in the form of discounted CPUs?
Back in the day, there were stores that would sell only Apple equipment and related peripherals. I don't know if they signed any exclusive deals, but I don't recall any noise about that. Yes Intel is huge, making it vunerable to charges of monopolistic tendencies, but what is it about this case that makes it fundamentally different from any sort of exclusive agreements?
Consider: I might want to sell only cheese from a certain company, and discounts (kickbacks if you like) might make that choice even sweeter. What's wrong with that? Why do I have to sell anybody else's cheese? And why do the cheese manufacturer and I have to be punished?
What do we eat? it takes 60 days or so for corn, 100 for potatoes... and just where are we planning to plant these? In the post-apocalyptic soil eh?
Good One (tm). Of course, they are doing something, I'm not, but there is such a thing as wasted effort.
You know the funny thing about the rm -f thing? These days, it does more harm when I'm logged in as myself than when logged in as root:
/usr/local, /etc, or /var). A badly written rm -f removes parts of my system sure, but my home folder is usually unnaffected. An hour tops to restore stuff.
When I sudo into root, I am typically in some sub-directory (ie.
However, if I were to make the same mistake any in my home tree (which is where I normally am when not sudo or root), I've lost a crapload of hours of personal work.
So for personal machines (and a lot of us are running our own personal unixen these days), I'd argue that one is more likely to actually do some real damage (albeit to your stuff) as a regular user than as root (or sudo)
Just a thought....
Let's say he worked full time at a real job (tm), and spent his evening hours selling and taxing. If this was the case, he's earned money while most of us wasted that time watching TV, posting to slashdot (e.g. me :-), or some doing some such activity. I'd love to be making 24 grand USD in my spare time. On top of that, this income isn't taxed in the real world (or is it?)
The PC AT power supply does sound like the most efficient way to do it. Even if you've got a couple of devices that don't run off 12V or 5V, you can always slap a diode here and there to drop the voltage to your desired level; even if you're off by 0.3V, you'll be OK.
The only trouble would be any devices that need higher than 12V, for that, you could try connecting two AT supplies (GND - 12V-GND - 12V), so the max difference would be 24V. Do be careful: if the grounds cannot be "decoupled", you'll have a nice short on your hands.
On a related topic, I recently started chopping off my wall warts and replacing them with two USB plugs and some electronics, so when I travel with my gadgets I only need one hydra cable which I plug into my laptop. Provided you stay within the USB limits on current draw, you'll be fine.
Cheers.
I heartily agree... "with improved technology comes possibilities for improved learning".
Books are a relatively recent phenomenon in human history; the fact that several generations of children have grown up with books should not make you forget that most children did without books 300 years ago. I wonder if anyone said something along the lines of: "all these newfangled book things..., whatever happened to learning the important things in life, like watching your parents till the earth?"
I do also agree with the grandparent poster's implications about "too much technology", but the problem is not with technology itself, but with its shoddy use, and the unfortunate fact that such "toys" make it much easier for some parents to abscond their duties to teach their children.
At any rate, nothing stops a parent and child from playfully drawing different calculator shapes together, exploring computationally enhanced educational games collaboratively, or doing some good old fashioned (relatively speaking) book reading.
I'm surprised that nobody really seems to understand the context from the Hatian point of view:
I think this form of censorship is along the same lines as a society censoring a public figure for making (even remotely) disparaging remarks about _any_ group. I'm sure we can recall an instance when some Mayor/Newscaster/Governor/Councilwoman/Banker/CEO made some (apparently) anti- (mexican/black/jewish/chinese/mexican/...) remarks and was taken to task to apologise.
Now, one can argue about whether GTA is a "public figure" or not and whether this is covered under "Free Speech". But inasmuch as the "opinions" of the characters in the game reflect the thoughts of the game developers - which are now broadcast to all who are within earshot - one could consider them public.
I think it's well within reason for individuals/groups/companies to seek censure against (perceived) defamatory remarks.
Do we all remember the brouhaha about a certain singer's: "Kick me, Kike me" lyrics?
I hope that, at the very least, this gives you pause to think about the feelings of individuals/groups who don't appreciate such "unpleasant" references to themselves.
This post and the others below it seem to equate "best choice" with "better feature set" (yes, those on either side of this debate).
Sometimes, as in the case of iTunes, the "best choice" is for people who want to play their music and not hassle with it. How many people actually want to script anything? Just drag what you want, (album, song, artists) into the playlist window and boom! It's done. That's usually the advantage of GUIs (which are usually harder to script) over CLI (which are usually easier to script): you can figure out how to do things more easily with a GUI. (it's not as easy to figure out how to manipulate a CLI app without reading the man pages or the "usage screen").
Yeah, some people could do with more features, so in that case, it isn't the "best choice" for them. But on the whole, it is for most people. There is hardly ever a single solution to satisfy everybody's needs, but I can say this for a fact, for most people I've talked with (who use iTunes), it is their "best choice".
Ordered it this morning... I'm so psyched!
Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait.
Here you go:
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/ants/
I found this a while ago while doing something similar in distributed computing.
Now, I'm not jusifying these criminals who defraud people. Personally, as a Nigerian, I am embarrassed to get these letters as well, and once in a while I send a scathing reply (which I bet is promptly deleted)
:-D
:-)
:-)
Don't forget that "no truly honest person falls for these scams". The greedy fools who wanted to defraud the Nigerian government got defrauded themselves, and they have the gall to complain
But one thought constantly crosses my mind when I hear people complaining about these crooks. I am ever surprised that no one talks about colonization, slavery, land grabs, and all the other "scams" the nation of Britain pulled on Nigerians for centuries. And don't forget that those scams were sanctioned by the British Government itself
No, I'm not bitter... part of that was our fault. But when enteprising young men from Nigeria (much like British "entrepreneurs" in the late 1800s and early 1900s) decide to fleece Britain or America, fooling the locals from those countries, I must admit it makes me chuckle just a little bit
Yes some American and British victims are "innocent", and I realize a few people have actually died while pursuing these quests for illegal money, so I'm not trying to belittle the situation; governments should continue the crackdown on these perpertrators, and their foolish victims. Yes the victims; what ever happened to aiding and abbetting a crime? That should make them delete those emails quick!
I hope I have been able to add another dimension to your thoughts when you read about 419 scams.
Nwanua.